Court upholds firing of 2 LAPD officers who ignored a robbery call to play 'Pokemon GO'

LOS ANGELES -- Two Los Angeles police officers who were fired in 2017 for playing the video game Pokémon GO while on the job, have been denied reinstatement by a judge.

According to court documents, former officers Louis Lozano and Eric Mitchell said "screw it" when called to respond to a robbery at Macy's, and instead started talking about how to catch the Pokémon Snorlax in the mobile game Pokémon Go.

A police regulatory board unanimously determined the officers' conduct was "unprofessional and embarrassing" and "violated the trust of the public." That's when they were officially fired.

During their appeal, the officers tried arguing that the patrol car recordings should be dismissed because they were private conversations, but both the lower court and the appeals court disagreed.